A draft emergency executive order to declare a national emergency to allow President Donald Trump to take unprecedented control over voting is being circulated by anti-voting activists who said they are in coordination with the White House.
Voting rights experts, democracy advocates, and at least one state election chief said Trump doesn’t have the authority to claim such powers — and any attempt would be blatantly unconstitutional.
The draft order — which is said to be based on a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election — would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference.
The order comes from MAGA activists who have been coordinating with the White House. One of the advocates for the order is Peter Ticktin, the attorney for Tina Peters, the former GOP Colorado county clerk who is currently serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach, in an attempt to find voter fraud based on election conspiracies.
The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution explicitly gives states — not the president — sole authority over elections.
Here’s a hint to election officials: You don’t have to wait for the Supreme Court to confirm an unconstitutional thing is unconstitutional. The idea that everything he says is true until the court says otherwise is part of the problem. He’s the federal executive trying to tell state employees to do something. He doesn’t hold any authority or power over you, emergency or no.
A lot of Americans don’t understand this and think “Executive Orders” are equivalent to laws. They are not.
The US constitution gives the president broad authority over the Executive Branch of the federal government and ZERO authority over anything else. Your local county clerk, who most likely handles elections, subject to the laws of your state, can and should just ignore the POTUS.